Metsfanmax wrote: On the other hand, I was expressing the hope that we would have a systematic change to a state where donation to charitable causes is handled by the government in an ordered manner

Man, the government taking your money without you having a say about it (through taxes) and giving it to charity, is not charity. It's something else all together.

Charity by definition is voluntary. Taxes are not voluntary.What you are actually talking about is theft.

It is not theft, it is part of the social contract. You implicitly agree to it by being part of a representative democracy, paying your taxes and obeying the law. It can only be theft if you believe the government is illegitimate or does not represent you.

Juan_Bottom wrote:You attack anything specific about what I say and I will destroy your arguments with the wrath of an angry god and make you appear to be a drooling retard barely capable of clickety-clicking your keyboard into sentences that have structural form.

I don't care about your class warfare rhetoric. All you are doing is attempting to throw down one set of elites and replace them with another set of elites. And you don't even identify the right problem. The CEO pay is but a consequence of the debt based currency.

""If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered".- Jefferson

Considering what you are railing against, you might want to reread that Jefferson quote a few more times until it finally sinks in.

You're like a doctor giving the flu patient a tissue instead of fighting the very virus that is causing the sickness.

These analogies are old, son.Jefferson is the most two-faced president we had until the mid 1800s. Philosophically, he was also wrong quite a bit of the time. In fact, so far, that quotation has been wrong. Let that sink in. But! If I were you, I'd let the wisdom of John Adams sink in a little bit deeper than Jefferson's. If Jefferson had his way, America would have been a French puppet State. True Fact. I'd be stupid to listen to just Jefferson on any subject.

Funkyterrance wrote:Ok, let's look at it from this perspective:Do you personally buy any products/services from corporate owned companies? Isn't it really consumer buying habits then that are to blame? If nobody bought products/services from corporate owned enterprises there would be no big fat CEO's grubbing all the profits. The low prices gained by the corporate structure are what's attractive to people but then they don't like the consequences of their support. Why is it so easily forgotten that the two things are connected?

Or I could take a knife and go kill the sons-of-bitches like Mary Harris Jones said?! Just because it's an option doesn't make it a good one.There's no question of who to support anymore. People who make $19K a year don't have any options for where to shop. And in my community, we have Wal*mart, JCP, Walgrens, CVS, F&F, Shop*Ko, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Cub Foods, Sullivan's Grocery, and Menard's. That's it for 45 miles. All big-chain stores. Our beloved Kmart will be closed by January.

The low prices argument is bullshit. Just because a company has low prices does not mean they get low prices by ripping off their employees and giving the money to the CEO. Like Hostess did. The two things were 'not connected' until recently. That's what's so easily forgotten. Union power peaked in 1970, and this out-of-control CEO pay sh*t didn't start until around '78. And that's not a coincidence. The system didn't work like this until now, and these assholes don't have to continue making more money than God for our country to function. They don't earn this, the workers are the ones who create the wealth.

Juan_Bottom wrote: I'd let the wisdom of John Adams sink in a little bit deeper

John Adams it is, then!

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.- John Adams

You, and many many more like you, have no understanding of what our currency is, thus you cannot see how it is a foundation built on sand. It is the root cause, the things you see around you are but a consequence of the debt based currency.

Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.- John Adams

John Adams and Jefferson were of a like mind on the issue of a Central Bank that can create our currency.

Like I've maintained, until the debt based currency system is changed, no plan or action will fix these other issues.

How hilarious. Jim Sinegal has a net worth of around $2 billion. LMFO!!!!!!

Did you know, well, of course you didn't know, but Mr Sinegel along with the rest of the board of Costco, voted to pay an early dividend check to the shareholders (they are included BTW) before the year is out to avoid the increased taxes on said dividends.

That is a $3billion Christmas gift that will be taxed at 15% instead of the 43.3% that it would have been taxed come January 1.

Yeah. See how you get played, Juan? Like a fiddle.

WSJ Editorial wrote:One of the biggest dividend winners will be none other than Mr. Sinegal, who owns about two million shares, while his wife owns another 84,669. At $7 a share, the former CEO will take home roughly $14 million. At a 15% tax rate he'll get to keep nearly $12 million of that windfall, while at next year's rate of 43.4% he'd take home only about $8 million. That's a lot of extra cannoli.

This isn't exactly the tone of, er, shared sacrifice that Mr. Sinegal struck on stage in Charlotte. He described Mr. Obama as "a President making an economy built to last," adding that "for companies like Costco to invest, grow, hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires something from all of us." But apparently $4 million less from Mr. Sinegal.

For the record, it was sort of smart for the Costco board to do this, but what is strange is that dividends are usually paid from earnings.

The $3billion dividend early cashout to avoid the increasing taxes is being financed through a loan. Costco is borrowing $3.5billion to pay this. Sinegal is actually taking on debt to get paid now. This is unusual for companies to do it like this. But hey, it's their company and their money, if that's what they wanna do, more power to them.

But it's funny to see JB put him on some sort of pedestal as he's doing the exact sorts of things that bug him about other CEOs.

patches70 wrote:John Adams and Jefferson were of a like mind on the issue of a Central Bank that can create our currency.

Like I've maintained, until the debt based currency system is changed, no plan or action will fix these other issues.

Were they? John Adams was a New Englander and Jefferson was a Virginian slave master. New England joined the war, largely, because of the currency manipulation in New England done by.... the Bank of England. Jefferson, on the other hand, was hugely indebted to the Bank and many others. Before the war would end he would find new creditors in the Netherlands, and later came to despise the Dutch banking system. And again, this is due to their wanting him to repay his debts.Our Central Bank has kept our nation afloat during times of crisis like the Depression and WWII, and while you might say our Central Bank caused these crises, you cannot deny that without it we would not be the one-world superpower today. I don't know what you're bitching about exactly, probably some gold standard sh*t, but I'm a historian, and you don't know jack, You're quoting without context. Once the war ended, all of our founders except for Washington and Adams turned into b*tchy, two-faced high school girls, all with hidden and mischievous goals.

Furthermore, I'm going to address how we will fix these "other issues" that you haven't laid out. John Adams, with the support of Eldebridge Gerry and others actually designed our system of government so that America's "Natural Aristocracy," would be able to wield great power in the legislative branch, but the Executive branch would allow the people to regain or keep control. It's all laid out in Adams' book on government. There has been a natural cycle of corruption and reemergence since then, just as Adams predicted. Our system is brilliant. Today, obviously, we live in one of those periods where we need to regain control of the legislature. Now control of wallstreet and the banking cartels would be nice, but as I have worked for banks, I know the goal cannot be to destroy them. and you know that the legislature is the body politic who are supposed to be wrangling the banks in. And yet, I question that you actually have some special insight that I don't have. We've sent Elizabeth Warren to capital hill, and now we are giving her subpena power. My faith, as always, resides in the power and will of the people to move true leaders to the capital. Your soap boxing doesn't appear any different to the soap boxing of the 1930s.

I actually went with this jpeg because I already knew everything you were going to say. Notice I didn't say anything specific except "this is how it should work."

patches70 wrote:Did you know, well, of course you didn't know, but Mr Sinegel along with the rest of the board of Costco, voted to pay an early dividend check to the shareholders (they are included BTW) before the year is out to avoid the increased taxes on said dividends.

That is a $3billion Christmas gift that will be taxed at 15% instead of the 43.3% that it would have been taxed come January 1.

Yeah. See how you get played, Juan? Like a fiddle.

I actually did know this, and I don't understand why you think I should have a problem with it? You're juxtaposing and presenting a false image of my ideals. Or to be more clear: you made up some lies about me in your head.This company isn't giving their board big fat checks by taking money away from their workers, which was the point of my last posts. So while it is a bit sad somehow maybe that they avoided paying triple taxes, they didn't do anything that was illegal or that was outright immoral. I can't even say that it's in the grey area.You continue to act smugly and condescendingly, but you invented a false version of me and of history to attack and/or support your position. You don't look as smart as you think that you do.Jenga.

Phatscotty wrote:Maybe other people will start paying more in taxes when those people who are obsessed with other people's money start leading by example. There is nothing courageous or compassionate about lust for other people's money, and is actually probably the greediest thing in our world currently.

Besides, other people paying more in taxes does not fix anything

To be fair I don't get the impression that the proponents of redistribution are envious. It appears they are just disgusted by the bourgeoisie. For what reason is still to be determined.

patches70 wrote:

Metsfanmax wrote: On the other hand, I was expressing the hope that we would have a systematic change to a state where donation to charitable causes is handled by the government in an ordered manner

Man, the government taking your money without you having a say about it (through taxes) and giving it to charity, is not charity. It's something else all together.

Charity by definition is voluntary. Taxes are not voluntary.What you are actually talking about is theft.

Taxes are indeed voluntary. Nobody is forcing you to live in the US.

Night Strike wrote: Heck, you all reamed on Mitt Romney, a former CEO, even though he gave something like 20% of his income to charity.

Metsfanmax wrote:Most of the money Romney has donated to "charity" has really just been to support his church, which I do not consider to be charitable giving of the type that benefits society as a whole. Apparently if you're Mitt Romney, you essentially only deserve his support if you believe in the same religious views he does.

So because you don't like the charity, those donations are deemed as invalid and unworthy?

Metsfanmax wrote:Because charitable giving is no longer needed if people contribute to that cause as a result of their taxation.

Yep, let's turn all our money over to the alter of the government and have them dictate from on high how we are permitted to live our lives. There is nothing efficient about the government, so our money is wasted instead of actually spent on good.

Metsfanmax wrote:As I already said, because Buffett writing a check to the government wouldn't actually cause systematic change. Being an advocate so that he and everyone else of his level of wealth is forced to pay more in taxes, would result in change.

Buffet doesn't want to pay more in taxes: he wants income taxes to rise. Buffet makes his money through investments, not income, so punishing tax rates won't affect him. He's a massive hypocrite, yet he's Obama's champion so the left loves him. He's a billionaire investor, yet he's out there calling for tax hikes on small business owners that are punished for their business making $250,000 in a year. He doesn't call for tax hikes on himself.

Metsfanmax wrote:

Furthermore, why are you comparing a BILLIONAIRE investor to the owner of a small business (since they're both considered the same level of rich under Obama)?

Was I doing that?

By championing Buffet.....yes. He is a mouthpiece for big government and crony capitalism because he is precisely one of those people who if the taxes and regulations actually affected him has enough money to pay them and outlast his competition who can't afford them. He gets richer off more government because his competition is driven out of the market due to governmental intervention, not producing a better/cheaper product. Or he simply calls for actions that don't actually affect him (like higher income taxes) but harm his competitors.

On the other hand, I was expressing the hope that we would have a systematic change to a state where donation to charitable causes is handled by the government in an ordered manner[/quote]

Problem is that governments are the least efficient method of doing things, other than becoming larger. You get twice as much bang for your buck by just leaving it on the road than you do for any government redistribution.

DoomYoshi wrote:Problem is that governments are the least efficient method of doing things, other than becoming larger. You get twice as much bang for your buck by just leaving it on the road than you do for any government redistribution.

Yes, but if no one is doing anything about the problem, an inefficient solution is better than no solution. That is the main problem with the consistently anti-government responses. Sure, it's fine to champion "efficient" methods of problem solving, but that's only relevant if you're actually out there pushing for those things to happen in the private sector. None of these people do.

DoomYoshi wrote:Problem is that governments are the least efficient method of doing things, other than becoming larger. You get twice as much bang for your buck by just leaving it on the road than you do for any government redistribution.

Yes, but if no one is doing anything about the problem, an inefficient solution is better than no solution. That is the main problem with the consistently anti-government responses. Sure, it's fine to champion "efficient" methods of problem solving, but that's only relevant if you're actually out there pushing for those things to happen in the private sector. None of these people do.

I do, but I guess that's beside the point.

I'm trying to eat as high up on the food chain as possible so I only eat cannibals now.

DoomYoshi wrote:Problem is that governments are the least efficient method of doing things, other than becoming larger. You get twice as much bang for your buck by just leaving it on the road than you do for any government redistribution.

Yes, but if no one is doing anything about the problem, an inefficient solution is better than no solution. That is the main problem with the consistently anti-government responses. Sure, it's fine to champion "efficient" methods of problem solving, but that's only relevant if you're actually out there pushing for those things to happen in the private sector. None of these people do.

I do, but I guess that's beside the point.

Ok, well then I applaud your efforts, but there's a disturbing conflict among many small government advocates. I understand why one might rail against constant big government expansion, but if we all agree on what the goals are, then it's better to have a solution than not have one. For example, let's say we can all agree that poverty is a bad thing. If we think that we have some obligation to stop bad things from happening (and I think that we do), then we are all obligated to pitch in, to the extent that we can. If private charity could get the job done, and prevent it from recurring, then I would be for that solution (but it would require a nationwide effort). But of course, doing so requires a significant time investment by those involved, because you have to set up an entire infrastructure for monitoring conditions to ensure that poverty is not still happening. We already have an entity that does this monitoring -- the government -- and it's no surprise that there's only a limited amount of resources in the private sector for doing this, because private sector work in this area can only run on donations since there is not a whole of money to be made in ending poverty (actually, this is not so true if a legitimate loan system is established, and this can be seen in the microloan systems used in developing nations). But there's not enough private donations to end poverty. So if you are a small-government conservative, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place; you can either admit that poverty is bad but recognize that nothing is going to change it because people don't donate enough, or you can advocate the one reasonable solution we have (let the government infrastructure that already exists, help solve this problem), at the expense of threatening a government expansion that you do not want. I sympathize with the position that such people are in, as I am not really someone that has a stance on how much influence the government should have. I am a consequentialist and I think that it is more important to actually solve the problem, rather than not solve the problem and have a more ideal (limited) system of government. The best society is one where bad things do not happen, and we are foolish to avoid using any tools we can to stop bad things from happening.

I should point out again that this conclusion rests on the assumption that we have a moral obligation to prevent things like poverty. If you agree with that, then you should be willing to contribute what you can to solve such problems, but if you don't, then obviously you might feel something akin to being stolen from if you are taxed to solve this problem. But I think that anyone who doesn't think poverty is bad enough to compel action would be a rather unpleasant sort of person.

DoomYoshi wrote:Problem is that governments are the least efficient method of doing things, other than becoming larger. You get twice as much bang for your buck by just leaving it on the road than you do for any government redistribution.

Yes, but if no one is doing anything about the problem, an inefficient solution is better than no solution. That is the main problem with the consistently anti-government responses. Sure, it's fine to champion "efficient" methods of problem solving, but that's only relevant if you're actually out there pushing for those things to happen in the private sector. None of these people do.

I do, but I guess that's beside the point.

Ok, well then I applaud your efforts, but there's a disturbing conflict among many small government advocates. I understand why one might rail against constant big government expansion, but if we all agree on what the goals are, then it's better to have a solution than not have one. For example, let's say we can all agree that poverty is a bad thing. If we think that we have some obligation to stop bad things from happening (and I think that we do), then we are all obligated to pitch in, to the extent that we can. If private charity could get the job done, and prevent it from recurring, then I would be for that solution (but it would require a nationwide effort). But of course, doing so requires a significant time investment by those involved, because you have to set up an entire infrastructure for monitoring conditions to ensure that poverty is not still happening. We already have an entity that does this monitoring -- the government -- and it's no surprise that there's only a limited amount of resources in the private sector for doing this, because private sector work in this area can only run on donations since there is not a whole of money to be made in ending poverty (actually, this is not so true if a legitimate loan system is established, and this can be seen in the microloan systems used in developing nations). But there's not enough private donations to end poverty. So if you are a small-government conservative, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place; you can either admit that poverty is bad but recognize that nothing is going to change it because people don't donate enough, or you can advocate the one reasonable solution we have (let the government infrastructure that already exists, help solve this problem), at the expense of threatening a government expansion that you do not want. I sympathize with the position that such people are in, as I am not really someone that has a stance on how much influence the government should have. I am a consequentialist and I think that it is more important to actually solve the problem, rather than not solve the problem and have a more ideal (limited) system of government. The best society is one where bad things do not happen, and we are foolish to avoid using any tools we can to stop bad things from happening.

I should point out again that this conclusion rests on the assumption that we have a moral obligation to prevent things like poverty. If you agree with that, then you should be willing to contribute what you can to solve such problems, but if you don't, then obviously you might feel something akin to being stolen from if you are taxed to solve this problem. But I think that anyone who doesn't think poverty is bad enough to compel action would be a rather unpleasant sort of person.

Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein

Juan_Bottom wrote:You attack anything specific about what I say and I will destroy your arguments with the wrath of an angry god and make you appear to be a drooling retard barely capable of clickety-clicking your keyboard into sentences that have structural form.

I don't care about your class warfare rhetoric. All you are doing is attempting to throw down one set of elites and replace them with another set of elites. And you don't even identify the right problem. The CEO pay is but a consequence of the debt based currency.

""If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered".- Jefferson

Considering what you are railing against, you might want to reread that Jefferson quote a few more times until it finally sinks in.

You're like a doctor giving the flu patient a tissue instead of fighting the very virus that is causing the sickness.

These analogies are old, son.Jefferson is the most two-faced president we had until the mid 1800s. Philosophically, he was also wrong quite a bit of the time. In fact, so far, that quotation has been wrong. Let that sink in. But! If I were you, I'd let the wisdom of John Adams sink in a little bit deeper than Jefferson's. If Jefferson had his way, America would have been a French puppet State. True Fact. I'd be stupid to listen to just Jefferson on any subject.

Funkyterrance wrote:Ok, let's look at it from this perspective:Do you personally buy any products/services from corporate owned companies? Isn't it really consumer buying habits then that are to blame? If nobody bought products/services from corporate owned enterprises there would be no big fat CEO's grubbing all the profits. The low prices gained by the corporate structure are what's attractive to people but then they don't like the consequences of their support. Why is it so easily forgotten that the two things are connected?

Or I could take a knife and go kill the sons-of-bitches like Mary Harris Jones said?! Just because it's an option doesn't make it a good one.There's no question of who to support anymore. People who make $19K a year don't have any options for where to shop. And in my community, we have Wal*mart, JCP, Walgrens, CVS, F&F, Shop*Ko, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Cub Foods, Sullivan's Grocery, and Menard's. That's it for 45 miles. All big-chain stores. Our beloved Kmart will be closed by January.

The low prices argument is bullshit. Just because a company has low prices does not mean they get low prices by ripping off their employees and giving the money to the CEO. Like Hostess did. The two things were 'not connected' until recently. That's what's so easily forgotten. Union power peaked in 1970, and this out-of-control CEO pay sh*t didn't start until around '78. And that's not a coincidence. The system didn't work like this until now, and these assholes don't have to continue making more money than God for our country to function. They don't earn this, the workers are the ones who create the wealth.

Example:this is how it should work.

James Sinegal recent campaign donations (he's given $108,000 of soft money and $162,900 of contributions, mostly to Democrats):

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

I see, becuase its now the government's job to create jobs, not just to provide a safety net.

What ever happened to your lauded free market that was to solve everything completely on its own.

Funkyterrance wrote:Ok, let's look at it from this perspective:Do you personally buy any products/services from corporate owned companies? Isn't it really consumer buying habits then that are to blame? If nobody bought products/services from corporate owned enterprises there would be no big fat CEO's grubbing all the profits. The low prices gained by the corporate structure are what's attractive to people but then they don't like the consequences of their support. Why is it so easily forgotten that the two things are connected?

Or I could take a knife and go kill the sons-of-bitches like Mary Harris Jones said?! Just because it's an option doesn't make it a good one.There's no question of who to support anymore. People who make $19K a year don't have any options for where to shop. And in my community, we have Wal*mart, JCP, Walgrens, CVS, F&F, Shop*Ko, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Cub Foods, Sullivan's Grocery, and Menard's. That's it for 45 miles. All big-chain stores. Our beloved Kmart will be closed by January.

The low prices argument is bullshit. Just because a company has low prices does not mean they get low prices by ripping off their employees and giving the money to the CEO. Like Hostess did. The two things were 'not connected' until recently. That's what's so easily forgotten. Union power peaked in 1970, and this out-of-control CEO pay sh*t didn't start until around '78. And that's not a coincidence. The system didn't work like this until now, and these assholes don't have to continue making more money than God for our country to function. They don't earn this, the workers are the ones who create the wealth.

I'm not disagreeing that the workers create the wealth, that's pretty obvious.So let's take your example of your options within 50 miles: Do you happen to know which of these corporate owned chains are better to their employees? Does this affect where you shop or do you generally go where it's most convenient at the time/slightly cheaper? Everyone has options in an open market, it's just "too hard" to make an effort one way or another. So you save $5 choosing one place over another, even on a $20k salary this doesn't amount to a hill of beans.My point is that we Americans are very good at pointing out what's wrong but terrible at adjusting our habits in an effort to make things better. Armchair politicians can spout all they want but until they actually reflect their beliefs in their own consumer choices they can keep it to themselves as far as I am concerned.

Last edited by Funkyterrance on Tue Dec 11, 2012 3:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

Ah, all those magic jobs out there in a recession. What a shame that people are just too lazy to work. I'm totally with you on this. The Great Depression too. Just a load of bums who didn't want to get a job. Dust bowl? Try paying your water bills.

the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

I see, becuase its now the government's job to create jobs, not just to provide a safety net.

What ever happened to your lauded free market that was to solve everything completely on its own.

What? No seriously, what are you saying?

The government's job is not to create jobs. The government can provide a safety net. But there is providing a safety net, and then there's what the government does now, which is perpetuate the state that people find themselves in. It seems clear, at least to me, if we just take public schools, as an example. Public schools in the United States get more money per student, by far, than any other public school system in the world, yet we have very poor schools for the most part. I certainly don't have a solution to that problem, but I do know that the solution should not be making the per student amount higher when throwing more money at the problem has not worked the 2,000 other times we've done it. But I don't see anyone proposing anything other than throwing more money at the problem. Why?

I'm also not a 100% free market person, as you well know. What I am in favor of is limiting the government's control over things, especially when the things it does are abject failures in nearly every way.

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

Ah, all those magic jobs out there in a recession. What a shame that people are just too lazy to work. I'm totally with you on this. The Great Depression too. Just a load of bums who didn't want to get a job. Dust bowl? Try paying your water bills.

Woah there killer. Jumping the gun aren't we?

I guess my question to you would be this:

(1) How much more money, incrementally, has been spent on public education from 1960 to 2012? How much have the US public schools improved?

(2) How much money is spent on unemployment benefits? How many people have gotten jobs at the end or towards the end of their unemployment run?

(3) How much money is spent on welfare? How many people who have been on welfare have been able to get themselves out of welfare?

And throw in this one as well - What leads you to believe that the people who write and administer these laws are interested in anything other than their own self-preservation, power, and wealth? And who do you think ensure that those people will continue to enjoy power and wealth?

thegreekdog wrote:The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

We can land on the moon, we can pull a device from our pocket and communicate with anyone else in the world through any medium we like, we can buy a car that can accelerate faster than gravity, we can rent an apartment that is over half a kilometre off the ground.

Yet we cant set up a simple and efficient public framework in which to fund improvements to our schooling?

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Oh thats right we can, in fact theres lots of them all accross the political spectrum, we are just, collectively, too belligerant as a species to ever possibly agree on one.

Symmetry wrote:Agreed, but there is a well-established way of avoiding that moral obligation for people who really don't want to deal with the problem of poverty. Make poverty itself a moral crime. Call the poor feckless, lazy, ignorant and inherently criminal. It's one of those pervasive 19th century ideas that equates poverty with mental illness and criminality.

It's an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard.

The 20th and 21st century view is that the government can take care of those people, which is also an easy get-out for people who don't want to think too hard or actually solve the inherent problems.

Does your public school suck? Let's just throw another $2 million at it like we did every year for the past 30 years.Out of work? Let's just keep you on unemployment for a year or more.Underemployed? Let's just make sure you get enough food stamps and welfare checks to keep you there.

Ah, all those magic jobs out there in a recession. What a shame that people are just too lazy to work. I'm totally with you on this. The Great Depression too. Just a load of bums who didn't want to get a job. Dust bowl? Try paying your water bills.

Woah there killer. Jumping the gun aren't we?

I guess my question to you would be this:

(1) How much more money, incrementally, has been spent on public education from 1960 to 2012? How much have the US public schools improved?

(2) How much money is spent on unemployment benefits? How many people have gotten jobs at the end or towards the end of their unemployment run?

(3) How much money is spent on welfare? How many people who have been on welfare have been able to get themselves out of welfare?

And throw in this one as well - What leads you to believe that the people who write and administer these laws are interested in anything other than their own self-preservation, power, and wealth? And who do you think ensure that those people will continue to enjoy power and wealth?

These are questions that you find much more interesting than me, but I'd be happy to look at your findings and discuss them. Sadly, I'm not going to be doing the legwork for your own vague points. If you have some answers, I'll discuss them with you, but a Lionz style list of vague leading questions is just tiresome. Especially when they're immediately followed by another vague list.

the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein